


The White Room

by wily_one24



Series: Living In The Grey [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Paint It Black the sequel, all the old favourites, manufactured with the same equipment that processes angst, may contain traces of complete mind fuckery, this world is back, who would have thought
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:12:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wily_one24/pseuds/wily_one24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She owns Emma, but she is not out to break her anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Well, here we are. This is something that I thought would never be done. This story has been a while in the making and I have thought long and hard about whether it would be written. Eventually, however, the muse became too strong and it wanted to be told. 
> 
> **A/N2:** Paint It Black meant a lot of things to a lot of people and, I suspect, all of you come into this fic with many expectations. I am fairly sure I will meet exactly zero of them, but this is the story that is happening for these characters from the Paint It Black universe. This fic will not be a mirror copy of Paint It Black, but it will have its own struggles and plot lines. The most glaring difference, obviously, is that there is no non/dub con in this fic. Unless referencing past incidents. The story as it ended in the last fic should have given that away, but I feel it needs to be mentioned. While the relationship between Emma and Regina remains the same in terms of dominance/submission, it is fully consensual from both parties at this stage. 
> 
> Sorry for the long author's note, I know how annoying those are, but I feel these things needed to be mentioned. Also... 
> 
> ****** This story remains canon to the Paint It Black universe, therefore all characters/plotlines/etc introduced since the end of S1 do not figure into the telling of this fic. While some aspects may be introduced, they will cleave more closely to this universe than the show. 
> 
> ****** The old James/David debate. I am sorry. Trust me, it is as strange for me to write 'James' as it is for you to read it in regards to David... but that is where the Paint It Black universe leads us. At the time of writing PIB, it was something I struggled with before finally making a choice and, obviously, I chose the wrong one. I'm stuck with it now. 
> 
> On to the fic (one more note to follow at the end)...

***

The fire crackles pleasantly in the hall, bathing the room in a muted orange glow and the clean scent of pine wood, smoke and buried hostility. Regina is as comfortable as she will ever be in this castle, a stranger and obvious outsider. 

Which is to say; she’s not comfortable at all. 

The expected battle never did occur and, whilst she suspects Snow and her merry followers will never be quite happy about her existence, there has come a time of peace in the last two years, a grudging form of acceptance that hinges on one thing. 

She lifts her eyes at the footsteps entering the hall and immediately finds that one reason.

Regina smiles and Emma glows. 

In the past two years she has been to this castle only once before, for Henry’s last birthday celebration. She prefers the solitude, privacy, safety and, yes, even loneliness of her own castle. She prefers her time with Emma and Emma alone, her pet, her only real friend. Henry visits them regularly enough that she doesn't quite miss him. It hurts sometimes that she will never have with him what they had in Storybrooke, but not even she can deny how much he is thriving here in his grandparents’ castle, surrounded by people and living and life. The dank darkness of her own castle, in comparison, is hardly suitable for a prince. 

This season, however, is different and Regina will suffer one day of awkwardness and veiled condemnation for her son and her lover if it means she spends Christmas with them, particularly given that she hasn't seen her Pet in nearly a month. The absence is leaving her prickly and drawn, her skin tight and edgy with need. 

She is lost alone. 

Her eyes drink in the welcome vision before her. She has spoken to Emma over the past month through the mirrors, but this is different, this is face to face and breathing the same air and being close enough to touch. The expectation is heavy on her chest, making her work for the breath that she takes in. 

She raises just two fingers of her right hand, spiking up half an inch from the arm of the chair she’s in, barely even a twitch, but Emma responds. 

Regina watches the grace and ease with which the woman moves, immediately and without question, only her eyes showing the pleasure at being summoned. Emma’s skin is soft and supple and glowing in the firelight, her body is taut and firm and healthy, inviting. 

She kneels at Regina’s feet and both of them tremble when Regina reaches out to lift a lock of hair from her face to push it behind her ear. 

“Look.” Soft and tremulous, Emma’s voice trickles into Regina’s ear like a welcome balm as her arms lift the little bundle forward like an offering. “Isn't he beautiful, Regina?”

Yes. Of course the babe is beautiful, a little wrapped cherub of baby flesh and large, blinking eyes. But the aura of happiness and contentment he brings to Emma is even more so. At least to Regina’s eyes. 

She can feel eyes on her, little narrowed points, and if she cared to look up she would see Charming watching with thinly veiled distrust. Red is seated in the chair across from her and there is no hostility humming under her skin, but she watches Regina like a hound setting her prey. Regina knows the two of them talk, that Red is Emma’s trusted confidante and, as such, is privy to Emma’s feeling. It is this that, she suspects, that has the wolf less hostile than her peers. 

At her feet, kneeling in the muted green dress that clings to her in an almost cruelly tempting way, Emma coos over the child, clutching it to her chest in an unmistakable protective and loving gesture. Regina does not want to be the one to tear her from him. She has done nothing for the past month but count the hours until she could grasp Emma back and have her to herself again, but now she finds herself dreading the moment. For nothing else but the pain it will obviously cause. 

“He’s delightful.” Is her response. “What’s his name?”

One gentle forefinger trails down a tiny bud of baby nose. 

“Lancelot.” It comes whispered out of Emma’s mouth like a reverent prayer. “He’s called Lancelot.”

To her left, Regina hears the snort, and it brings a smile to her lips. 

“I call him Uncle Lance.”

The reaction is immediate and comical as Emma frowns absurdly at Henry standing next to the fire, her eyebrows sinking. This is a conversation that they've had repeatedly, obviously. He and Regina have had their reunion, it is definitely getting less tense between them. At first when Henry came to her castle he was frightened almost, but stubborn enough to meet her head on with his chin up. They have talked and it’s getting easier. 

And sooner or later it won’t ache when she wants to cradle him like she used to years ago. Maybe, possibly, sooner or later, he’ll let her. 

Emma is a natural mother hen, cradling the form to her shoulder, her body gliding in a soft rocking motion. Regina does not doubt that if anything could make her docile little pet directly disobey an order, it would be the tiny little body wrapped securely in her arms. She has no desire to test that theory, however, and so she merely nods her agreement. 

Soft clicking from the corner echoes from the room as Granny watches eagle eyed over her latest knitting project, certain to be another woolen hat or some undersized mittens for the child. 

“How are things?”

She speaks the unspeakable, not with any over words, but definitely understood if the quick looks shared between Emma and Charming are anything to go by. Emma visibly deflates, but she looks up and answers anyway, incapable of ignoring a simple question from her Queen.

“Fine.” But her voice is too high and too thin. “It’s… good.”

It’s not good. 

There are nerves, a growing buzz of tension, that sing under Regina’s skin. For obvious reasons this is not a subject that the people in this room want to discuss with her. An inner circle she is excluded from. 

A month. 

Emma has been gone a month. 

It’s the longest they've been separated since she banished Emma back to her parents’ castle in that first horrendous year. Her castle, with Emma, is comfortable. Without her it is large and cavernous and empty, echoing with memories and personal demons. She has been counting the days until she can take Emma home, surround herself with the feel and smell and sound of her. 

Yet watching her now, she doesn't know how feasible that is. 

Emma is smitten and, more so, Emma is needed. 

It instills the woman with a glow, a glow of belonging that Regina has only ever seen when they are alone together. Emma is content here, playing mother to her newborn brother whilst Snow… 

Well. Snow. 

That’s a completely different subject. 

Her pregnancy had gone as well as could be expected, but the closer her time had come, the more it had become obvious that she was not coping. As much as Snow likes to live in denial and pretend that her life is perfect, she had been unable to hide the fear and guilt and paranoia having a child in this land surrounded by magic had driven her to. 

They had talked about it, she and Emma, and had agreed Emma should stay at the summer castle to help during and after the birth. But it seems as if Emma is taking the initiative, becoming care taker for Snow and the baby. 

Regina has been in this castle for over an hour and Snow has yet to be seen. 

“Do you want to hold him?”

Emma lifts the baby up and Regina’s first thought is yes, but the room stills and she feels everyone’s eyes narrow, the hostility just a little less buried. Thankfully, before she can utter a refusal that can be nothing but awkward, the child takes care of the problem. 

He begins a tiny, little wail. 

“Oh.” Mother hen Emma immediately draws her arms in, hoisting him naturally to her shoulder as she stands without even looking to Regina for permission. “He’s hungry, I should take him back to Snow.”

She leaves, but not before meeting Regina’s eyes. 

It’s a promise. 

***

Emma knocks lightly on the chamber door. 

She doesn't wait for an answer. There’s not going to be one. Lancelot is the smallest little bundle she has ever held, almost weightless, and carrying him one handed is easy as she uses her right hand to open the door, step inside, then close it again. 

The room is dark. 

The symmetry is darker. 

The wailing in her ear is reaching desperate proportion, steady and relentless, the silence from the bed is harder to bear. Sense memory takes her to the large bay windows and she pulls the drapes, dragging them open and hooking them around the holders on the sides, not bothering to tie them. They won’t stay open long anyway. 

A shifting on the bed makes her look over just in time to see the lump roll over, dragging blankets further atop itself. 

“Snow.” Her voice is soft, calm and gentle, but the tone is firm and unyielding. “He’s hungry again.”

It’s a soft whine that answers her, a smothered grumble.

Emma sighs, shifts her brother, and comes to sit by the side of the bed. The mattress sinks under her weight, but the huddled lump doesn't move away and it’s easy enough to pull the furs down. Snow’s face is pallid, sunken and bruised looking. Her eyes blink wearily in the light. 

“Come on.” She urges just a little more gently. “He needs you.”

Theirs is a routine well established by now and Emma lays Lancelot down on the bed, allowing her both hands free to tend to her mother. She brushes lank and limp hair out of the woman’s face, cupping a cheek for a moment before bringing one hand under her neck to support her as she shifts the body upwards slightly on the pillows. 

Snow sinks back down, a stubborn bite to her lip. 

Today is not a good day, it seems. It should phase her, but it doesn't. Emma merely helps Snow roll to her side. She flips the buttons of her nightgown open and pulls the front down a little. It should feel strange, the perfunctory way she adjusts her mother, freeing her breasts, but it doesn't. 

Lancelot’s face is red and wrinkled as he squalls nearby and she reaches to pick him up, opening the cloth that swaddles him to free his red little fists and wrinkled, batting arms. 

“Shh, baby.” A coo, a whispered little hush of reassurance. “Your momma's right here.”

He’s so very easy to shift into place and he latches onto Snow easily and hungrily, cries quieting instantly into bubbling little gurgles and his face smooths out, his little arms finding rest against Snow’s skin as his hands grip greedily to the flesh of her breasts. 

Slowly, surely, Snow’s eyes sharpen until she looks down almost in surprise at the baby at her breast. 

“See, Snow?” Soft, even voice. “He’s right here. All he wanted was you.”

Snow blinks slowly. 

“Emma?”

And Emma smiles, reaching out again to brush her mother’s face.

“I’m here, too.” Her own lie trips her meter hard. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

A month. 

She’s been a month away from Regina, from her own home. As much as her parents and her son and her friends love her and name this castle hers, she doesn't. This is her respite and her peace, but not her home. 

She is needed here, but she is needed with Regina too. 

Her brain is torn with the choice she is too frozen to make. Regina wants her, she knows this; it’s as hard on her as it is on Emma, being apart for this long. As much as the woman doesn't like to admit to what she perceives as weakness, Emma knows, she can read it on Regina’s skin, in her words, in the tightness around her eyes when they speak in the mirror. 

But her mother… 

Snow is the one that nursed her back to health all those years ago, when she lacked the ability and the motivation to do so herself. And now it is her turn, her obligation, to do the same. Not that she needs an obligation, Emma would do this regardless.

Every time she changes her brother’s diaper, the times she and Henry coo over the child and share cuddling duties, every single time she brings Snow back into the awareness of her baby and watches her fall in love over and over again, Emma knows she belongs here and her heart wants it. If she asks, she knows Regina would allow her to stay longer. 

And yet the second she speaks to or even thinks about Regina, her body yearns and her heart changes its mind. 

The ideal solution would be to have Regina here. 

In the smallest, furthest, most secret part of her heart, and her mind, this is what Emma wants. She wants to live with Regina and still have access to her family all day every day. She wants everyone to get along. That is her ideal; that is her dream. 

And that is impossible. 

She is not blind to the tensions in the room, the mistrust and buried hurts, the timeless betrayals that will never die. She is not blind to Regina’s discomfort. All it ever does it crank up Emma’s nerves until they’re screaming and all she wants to do is peel her own skin off to make it end. 

Emma will never get what she wants, this is a reality she’s known her entire life, but that doesn't make it easier to bear. 

***

She has waited a long time for this and she doesn't really care to wait longer. Regina crowds Emma’s body as the woman opens the door to her chamber. Soft, welcoming curves tremble under the pressure she exerts. 

“Re…” It comes like a moan out of Emma’s throat, a rumbling little sound that Regina has thirsted for. “Regina.”

The door opens and she wastes no time pushing Emma through and closing it behind them, she grabs Emma’s arm and pulls her back, turning them both so she can shove her against the wood of the door. 

“We’re alone now.” Her voice is caramel thick and lust heavy. “I hope you haven’t developed any bad habits while you've been away.”

She is not gentle, her desperation apparent in the force with which she rocks into Emma, body to body, her knee between Emma’s, stomachs panting out against each other, and slams her mouth down on the side of Emma’s jaw. A high pitched whine sounds out of Emma’s throat. 

“Queen.” She rushes to apologise. “My Queen.”

The words snap something in her, easing and smoothing out the spikes of her loss, and she opens her mouth, sucking hard at the salty, pulsating skin underneath it. Her left hand grabs Emma’s right, bringing it up beside her face and holding it still as their fingers twine together. Her right hand slides into the top of Emma’s dress, over the swell of an ample breast, so that she can pinch a taut nipple. 

A hand comes up to grasp at her waist and it causes her to push her hips forward. 

“I missed you.” It’s a heated, fervent litany. “My Queen, I've missed you, I missed…”

She can’t seem to finish he thought, so Regina sucks one last time at her neck and then pulls back, sliding her hand from Emma’s dress to caress the top of her head, the intricate little half braid that crowns her. 

“Me too, Pet, me too.”

The caress becomes pressure, a definite push down, and Emma acquiesces with a small, audible sigh of contentment, her knees buckling easily and falling softly to the floor. She looks hopeful and eager and _owned_ , down there on her knees, Regina’s very own human pet, back against the door. 

Regina’s skirts lift easily and the air skims over her thighs as Emma opens her mouth as naturally as breathing. Her right knee lifts and presses against the door above Emma’s left shoulder, shin resting against the wood, as Emma finally makes contact. 

It’s almost painful, this pleasure, and the eagerness with which Emma mouths her sex and eats at her. The fingers of her left hand squeeze tighter and she doesn't even have to wait to feel the answering squeeze of Emma’s fingers against her own. Her right hand slams against the door and she swallows the moan that wants out, that wants to roar her pleasure. 

Now is not the time, the place, to announce themselves. Not in this castle, not where any number of people could hear them. 

She is unable to control the thrusting of her hips, a frantic grind that slams the back of Emma’s head against the wood. But her ears pick up the humming that announces the pleasure of her pet. Regina is in control and Emma obeys and that is their life, but it is not the same as it once was. She owns Emma, but she is not out to break her anymore. 

It is shown in the way Emma’s hands come up against the back of her thighs, gripping her skin hard enough to make marks, pushing and pulling her body in a rhythm of Emma’s own making. She feels the fingertips creep up until they grasp at the cheeks of her ass. 

Just shy of fingernails. 

The pressure is sublime and it isn't long before she comes, a month long wait over as she throws her head back and bites her lip so hard she tastes blood. 

***

Emma’s blood sings. 

She pads across the floor of her chamber in bare feet, the dregs of several orgasms making her light footed, sleepy and content. If she were any more of a Disney princess, she might even be singing right now. The thought makes a laugh tumble out of her mouth, unexpected and happy. 

Her bed is empty and her hips heft with the weight of clothes once again, but it’s a loneliness she can bear. They only had a limited amount of time to get ready for the Christmas feast and Regina has already left to spend more time with Henry. They’ll have more time after all the eating and drinking is done.

The water in her washstand is fresh and cool as she splashes her face. Regina is here and it has eased the ever constant unease she has felt since her arrival here just before Lancelot’s birth. A dab of perfume behind her ears and on her neck. 

She plans to wear a new gown, a dark golden hue cut to her waist, Regina's favourite colour on her. 

There was a time, a hazy lifetime that seems so long ago as to be a dream, that she would have been caught dead rather than plan dresses and feasts and trying new hairstyles that may or may not flatter her. But now these are the things that make up her life, travelling by horse, roast beast cooked in fireplace, bread made from wheat grown in the garden downstairs, gowns and castles and knights and magic. 

And pleasing Regina. 

Reaching for her brush, Emma’s eyes catch a box sitting on her dresser. Silver, ornate, and beautiful there is an intricate flower design etched into the lid and sides, the hinge is delicate golden filigree. It all sits atop a folded sheaf of thick cream coloured paper. She eases the paper out and opens it, fingers caressing the heavy weight of it, it’s everything she never knew existed in her old life. 

The writing does not surprise her and she doesn't even notice the smile on her lips as her eyes trace the loops and curves of Regina’s neat, spidery script. 

_My Pet, Something beautiful for the most beautiful thing I own. Wear it and know you are mine._

They’re all going to open their presents after dinner, but it’s not that surprising Regina wants to keep this moment private. There isn't much that can be inside a box such as this one and so Emma is not surprised to find jewelry inside. 

She is surprised to see a necklace. It is beautiful, of course it is, Regina has impeccable tastes. Her fingers trace the golden Ouroboros that sits coiled around her neck. It’s usually the only thing that Regina likes there, a sign of their relationship, the obstacles they overcame to get here. 

But the one thing Emma does not do is question her Queen. 

The pendant is a triangle and weighted perfectly to sit just inside the swelling of her breasts. The chain is delicate and tickles her skin. As she looks in the mirror, arms stretched high so she can reach the back of her neck, Emma smiles at the way it sits there. 

When the clasp clicks shut, however, Emma feels it like a punch to the gut. She barely has time to look at the mirror before the air around her begins to swell and throb. It’s awful and horrid and terrifyingly familiar that she can only call out one syllable for help. 

“Re…!”

Before the world blackens and she feels like she is falling. 

***

Regina is watching the delight on Henry’s face, kept well controlled and seemingly unaffected, like any good teenager would, as he opens his present when she feels it. 

At thirteen years of age, he is no longer a boy. He has filled out with the muscles of a teen who spends his spare time riding horses, training with his sword and archery masters, and trains hard. He works this land the way he never did Storybrooke. He eats up this life, feasts on it like he was born to it, and the happiness he sees in both his mother’s when he visits them only helps him adjust all the more. 

The sword she presents him with is forged and weighted with perfect balance, a fanged cobra carefully moulded into a coil around the haft, until the open gaping jaws form the cross guard and quillon. It is fashioned almost like a large cinqueda, shorter than a full broad sword, strong but small enough to be wielded by a thirteen year old boy. 

He has shown proficiency with a blade. At first they thought he would follow Snow’s footsteps and excel with a crossbow, but the stronger he became the more he favoured sword fighting. He sidesteps like a dancer, as strong in defense as he is in attack.

“Thanks Mom, this is aweso…!”

But he doesn't finish the sentence as the shock wave rattles the entire castle. Magic bristles the air like a tsunami of energy and Regina’s immediate thought is of Emma. She can see before her eyes that Henry is fine. 

She turns and races out of the door and doesn't pause to look back, she can hear his footsteps following her. Emma’s chamber is several doors down the hallway and she races to it without question. The door opens and Regina has to rear back with the assault of magic that barrels into her. 

It is rich and thick and tinged a sharp blue. This should be her first clue, but her panic overrides her common sense. Through the electric tang of it, she can feel Emma’s panic. She can see that the chamber is empty and though it is possible that she has merely gone downstairs to wait the coming feast, she knows different. 

She spies the open box on the dresser and the page that rests near it. That’s her writing, but it’s not her gift. She left nothing for Emma, not today. Her gift remains at their castle. 

Closing her eyes, Regina sends out her feelers, and gets nothing in return. 

Emma is gone. 

Emma has been taken from her and she knows only one who would dare. 

***

Snow brushes her hair slowly, her arm is heavy and all she wants to do is lie back down on her bed. But tonight she must go down to the great hall and talk and eat and pretend to be a person again. She closes her eyes and opens them again, bringing the brush back up to drag through her hair again. 

Soft, snuffling snores sound from the bassinet next to the dresser. She does not look down. The sound alone is enough to assure her he is there. He does not need her fawning over him. He would be better off somewhere else, she is sure of it. She is not cut out to be a mother. She will fail him like she failed Emma. 

She feels the wave of magic hit her like pulse and knows she should stand up, knows she should investigate. Regina is in her castle. Surely Regina would not dare use magic here. That is their agreement. Even without the banned use of magic, the mere fact of Regina being here should be reason enough to show herself, to make sure she can supervise. 

There is no trust between them. A grudging, acceptance maybe, but no trust. 

Someone else will take care of it. 

Someone else always takes care of it, she has learned. 

Nobody notices her absence. 

She looks down at her hand holding the brush. Her skin is pale and her wrist is thin. She cannot remember the last thing she wanted to eat. Of course, Emma makes her eat, brings her food and sits with her as she tries to consume the barest amount Emma will let her get away with. Most of the times she fails. She just does not enjoy it the way she used to. 

She doesn't enjoy anything she used to. 

At night, she curls up against James’ body, his limbs and heat as familiar to her as her own, his scent a comfort that helps her sleep. His voice is always encouraging and hopeful, tinged slightly with fear and disappointment. 

There are moments when she looks at her newborn baby and cannot believe her luck. That she would be allowed to have such a miracle. And she wants, so desperately she wants, to love him. She tries hard every day, tries to get up and get dressed and act like a proper human. 

She fails at this, too. 

Emma washes her hair and chatters about everybody in the castle, brings little snippets of news and the daily happenings, she makes sure Snow takes care of herself, she makes sure Snow takes care of her baby. Snow has failed Emma once again, forcing her into caretaker. 

Life is like a heavy, thick, impassable treacle that she must push through to make the smallest of movements. It takes such effort just to get up and bathe, let alone do anything more. 

She is steeped in the silence of her tomb like chamber, comforted only by the sounds of her sleeping babe, that the sudden bang of the door opening and slamming into the wall makes her jump, a startled yelp popping out of her mouth before she can stop it. 

“What have you done?”

Her first meeting with Regina since Henry’s birthday and it is with the woman’s hand around her throat, holding her up as she struggles for breath. 

“What have you done with Emma?”

“Mom!” 

Snow’s bulging eyes catch Henry standing behind the frightening form of his mother. 

“I…” Her fingers scrabble against Regina’s, nails scratching her own skin as she tries to get some space, the tips of her toes scraping the floor. “I… di… dn’t…”

Regina is red faced and angry beyond anything Snow can remember, even in the years before the curse. There is a promise of death in her eyes and Snow feels true fear. 

The first real feeling she can name since the birth of her son. 

Her eyes flicker to the side automatically, checking on the bassinet, and Regina’s eyes follow. A manic look of an idea flashes across her face and Snow finds the strength somewhere deep inside to reach up, grab Regina’s wrists and pull the woman off her, throwing her back. 

“Don’t you dare!” She is standing in front of the bassinet before Regina has even recovered. “You stay away from my son!”

The bassinet is shaken and their voices are loud, the resulting cry is inevitable and Snow’s heart squeezes, her face scrunching up as she tries to figure out what to do. Another wail and her mind is made up, turning her back on the most dangerous thing in the room to scoop the child up. 

He fits perfectly in her arms and she wants to take the moment to enjoy it, but she can’t, spinning back around to face Regina. 

Henry has his back to Snow, standing in front of Regina with his hands out, trying to placate her. 

“You have wanted to take her from me since day one!” Regina reaches around him to point an accusing finger at her, not touching or pushing Henry out of the way, but not letting him stop her either. “I should have known you would do something like this.”

“Nothing.” She manages the word whilst cradling her son, confusion swamping her. “I did noth… What about Emma? What happened to Emma?”

More footsteps thunder down the hallway and into the room. She looks up to see James, followed closely by Red and Granny and Grumpy. Archie flies in after them. 

“She’s gone.” It’s Henry’s deeper voice that answers her. “She was taken by magic.”

“Magic!” Regina practically spits it at her. “Do you know how dangerous that is? What you could have done to her!”

“I didn't.” She can only shake her head. “It wasn't me, I swear it.”

“Regina.” It is Archie that flutters his wings closer to them, hovering closer to the woman than Snow thinks wise when she is in this state. “Listen to Snow. She is incapable of magic, she doesn't trust it even if she could use it, and furthermore, she hasn't been out of this chamber in weeks.”

The shame of that failure will have to wait. 

“Blue.” The hatred has seeped out of Regina’s eyes, but not the fear. “The magic was blue.”

Determination closes upon Regina’s face as tightly as her fingers close into a fist. Snow feels fear for the person that Regina is now focused on. 

***

She collapses into herself as her feet hit the floor, the pain winding her beyond her limits. She hasn't felt this out of control, this afraid, for years. Her fingers find the ground and she clings to it, waiting for the nausea and vertigo to stop. 

Magic pulled her here, magic like the one on her old collar. 

“Well, well.” The voice is unfamiliar and honey sweet, full of delighted malice and the promise of pain. “I see Regina did choose well in her little plaything. You are a beauty, aren't you?”

Emma looks up to see eyes wide with expectation, eyes as wild as the hair that cascades around a pointed face. She barely has time to draw backwards, falling on her ass as her hands land behind her to hold her up. A quick look shows that the room has no windows and no visible door. No obvious escape.

And her captor laughs. 

“Don’t bother with magic, Dear. I've got wards up.” Then she licks her lips. “Now let’s see how well our old friend has trained you, shall we? It’s my turn.”

***


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“No.” She falls forward, hands out to stop the face plant, until she’s in a push up, elbows straining to keep her of the floor. “It’s different… we’re…”_  
> 
>  _Laughter greets her._  
> 
> _“We? There’s no we, you precious little child. She owned you, she broke you, and now she’s done with you. She gave you to me.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** I'll keep it brief, considering the last chapter. I know this chapter is kinda thin on plot or action, but I promise that the plot begins to stir, thick and heavy, after this chapter. This one was almost written quickly, blame my new quizup addiction for the extra day or so ;)

***~*~*~***

Emma stands the second she gets a breath of oxygen. 

“Who are you?”

She meets the woman’s eyes in a clear sign of defiance. A tiny flash of anger greets her, but it’s loaded more with glee than anything. And she’s seen that look before, the taste of challenge; she knows it well and this time it scares her as much as it did back then. 

“An old friend of Regina’s, but we’ve met before, Saviour.” Not in Emma’s memory they haven’t, but she barely has time to cock her head in confusion before the woman grins wolfishly. “You were throwing a sword through my chest at the time.”

The ocean of confusion and fear she had been swimming in since opening her eyes in this room suddenly becomes shark infested. 

“Maleficent.” 

The name slips out of her mouth automatically and before she can blink the woman pushes forward a step and wraps strong, slender fingers around her throat. Reflex and training has her backing down immediately, knees bending on instinct. 

The spike of success in Maleficent’s eyes is sickening. 

“I’m not a Queen, my Dear.” She seethes. “But you can call me Mistress.”

Emma doesn’t complete the kneel, pushing against the ball of her foot once again to stand fully. 

“Never.” The words come strange and unheard out of her throat, rusted. “Not to you.”

There’s a tightening around her throat that Emma wants to believe is Maleficent’s hand, despite the sinking feeling of cold metal against her skin. Blonde curls wisp over the side of her face as Maleficent pushes in close. 

“That’s not what you agreed to when you put on that pretty necklace. Voluntarily, I might add.”

Emma closes her eyes so that she doesn’t see the spots she knows will form against her struggle for breath. She tries not to give the woman what she wants, the fight, the desperation, but her body hasn’t consulted her brain on the matter and she finds her nails scratching at the arms holding her, her feet kicking out. 

“Don’t fight it, puppy.” Even the name makes her skin crawl. “You want to belong to someone so badly, you might find I can be incredibly nice if you earn it.”

“Never.” It’s a hiss, so venomous it might as well be a spit in the face. “I am not yours.”

Her head pulls forward, unable to bear the weight of the necklace that drags it down. 

“I told you not to fight it. You don’t want me to be nice? That’s fine. I can wear you down the same way your precious Queen did, with fire and blood.”

Emma grits her teeth and strains the vertebrae in her back trying to pull back up. There aren’t even any hands on her anymore. She is being dragged down and she cannot resist it. 

“Screw you, you crazy bitch.”

She can’t cover the groan of effort as the necklace bows her back, pulling her down into a forced kneel. 

“That’s right, Princess, I know how it was done. I was there, Regina told me _all_ about you.”

Her head shakes in denial. Not Regina, not her Queen. A hand comes down on her back, light and airy, just a touch, a trail of fingers down her spine. No weight is needed, that’s all provided the by anchor around her neck, the metal growing warmer into a heat she is beginning to fear. 

“Do you think you’re special to her?”

Emma knows she is. Emma knows. 

“You’re just like any other pet she’s trained and used and discarded.”

“No.” She falls forward, hands out to stop the face plant, until she’s in a push up, elbows straining to keep her of the floor. “It’s different… we’re…”

Laughter greets her. 

“We? There’s no we, you precious little child. She owned you, she broke you, and now she’s done with you. She gave you to me.”

“No!” It’s said with so much force the necklace practically slams her to the ground. “No.”

“It was planned from the start. When she no longer had any use for you, she would give you to me and I could finally repay you for that painful death.”

There are tears threatening Emma’s eyes and she wants to curse them, curse herself, and flay her eyes with sandpaper to rid herself of the weakness she is showing. 

“We do it all the time, swap our pets, she knows exactly what’s going to happen. I’m going to break you more than she ever did, use you up, suck the marrow from your bones, and give you back an empty husk. And she gave you to me anyway.”

She’s flat against the floor, unable to move, almost tasting dust and earth. 

“Please.” The word galls her, makes her let the tears come. “Please stop.”

And the weight disappears. 

“Well.” Maleficent gloats. “That didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would.” 

***

James watches quietly as Snow rocks the baby against her chest, bouncing on her toes. She’s cooing softly, almost unconsciously, and the sound is more than beautiful. She has not been this aware and awake for the entirety of their son’s life. 

He wants to travel back three years to the long forgotten town of Storybrooke and steal a camera, just so he can return here and capture this moment on film. To prove it existed. Not just for himself or the baby, but for Snow. 

This is beautiful and a sight he has waited weeks to see, but he knows enough to know it’s not going to last. This is not the first time she has held him, or gotten out of bed, but it is definitely the longest stretch. 

He was almost beginning to despair. But this… this is proof Snow can and will overcome this. 

People always discount him. He’s quiet and agreeable and usually doesn’t like to make waves. But he’s not simple and he’s not unsympathetic, he knows that there is a lot of trauma and guilt in Snow relating to the birth of their first child. Trauma that has gone buried and undealt with. She bends over backwards for Emma, anything related to Emma, in recompense. 

She was not prepared to birth another child in this land, surrounded by magic she does not trust, when she feels incapable of helping her first one. 

“She’s gone.” Her voice brings him out of his reverie. “James, Emma is gone again.”

He knows. 

“We have failed her again.”

He wants to, he should, deny that claim. He wants to be able to reassure her, but he can’t. Emma is gone, stolen from under the very roof that should protect her, and even Regina is panicked and worried about her. 

Regina is an issue he still cannot figure out. He sees Emma, he sees how happy and comfortable she is, how she has recovered over the last two years in a way he had at one point thought was impossible. She glows when she speaks of Regina. This in itself tells him that she is treated well. Yet he cannot forget, will not forget, the trauma that got them both to that point. The terror that Emma had lived under. The terror that Snow had decades before that. 

One thing he believes is that Regina would not let harm come to Emma. In her own way, she loves his daughter and he needs to accept that. 

“What are we going to do?”

Her eyes implore him, wide and desperate for an answer. 

He inhales and tells her the only truth he knows. 

“We have to trust Regina.”

***

This is not a time for subtlety. 

The doors slam open before Regina, banging hard into the walls. She practically glides in, long angry strides, shoulders drawn back, fire and threat and death in her eyes. Purple smoke billows around her feet, swirling and broiling in violent uncontrolled swirls. She is expected, there is no need to hide her coming. Now is the time for confidence, power, and enough self-control not to flay the woman the instant she appears. 

“Maleficent!” Her voice echoes through the cavernous hall. “Bring her to me now!”

She doesn’t have to wait long. 

But she does have to reign in her homicidal tendencies. Maleficent smiles amiably, toting her sceptre like an old black and white musical dancer about to swing a cane. Not even the memory of why she’d needed a new one was enough to make her waiver for one second. 

“Do try not to break my specially carved oak doors. Good craftsmen are so hard to find nowadays.”

She once called this woman her only friend, but they’re not friends. Not really. They’re acquaintances thrown together in loneliness and bitterness and the necessity of the disenfranchised. There might have been sincere affection at one stage, but that had burned out long ago and is now thin, weak, and as false as the faces they show the world. 

“Where is she?”

People have trembled before her. Entire lands have fallen to their knees in fear of her. 

Maleficent laughs. 

“Who, Dear?”

Regina feels her jaw clench in time to the squeezing of her heart. 

“Let’s not play games.” She’s not sure where the ability to remain steady is coming from. “I can smell her on you.”

It’s fear, familiar and seductive and terrifying in its implication. Emma’s fear. She would recognise the tinge of Emma’s magic anywhere, she knows it like she knows her own. Maleficent is soaked in it. It has been years since Regina has elicited such strong terror from Emma. Their magic combines at a much saner level now, but the memories remain. 

Emma, strung up and bleeding. Emma, begging on her knees. Emma, cowering and filthy on the floor of her dungeon. Emma, pleading as the tears fall down her cheeks. It galls her now, shames her beyond any other action of her past, that she could have gone to such an extent with anyone, let alone Emma. 

Love is weakness, her mother taught her from the minute she could comprehend speech, and it was a lesson she’d believed and lived her entire life. She loves Henry and nothing about that has been a weakness. She needs Emma, she cannot live without her. She’s pretty sure Emma needs her and she hasn’t been brave enough to define what that means to either of them, let alone say the words out loud, but if it isn’t love then it’s too close for comfort. 

“That’s not disturbing at all.” Maleficent twirls her fingers over her replacement staff. “But either way, I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Her eyes follow the movement of pale skin over the glowing blue ball held in the silver of a dragon’s claw. That’s when she feels it; the hum of magic emanating there. The power encased in the glass is strong and alien and, as she reaches out and discovers with a painful jolt through her arm, impervious to magical intervention. 

“You have to know this will not end well for you.”

The casual shrug she receives in response makes her feel weak and incompetent. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you’re still insistent about it you are welcome to search my entire castle for your lost pet.” 

Maleficent settles herself on her intricate chair, comfortably and carefree, picking up a silver chalice filled with dark, blood red wine. 

Regina hopes it’s wine. The thought sickens her, makes her stomach protest, rolling over her empty belly. 

“Go.” Maleficent flicks her wrist impatiently. “Search to your heart’s content. I’ll wait here and when you finish, we can have a drink and you can try to be more civil.”

She knows what she’s going to find, but it doesn’t stop her. A quick sweep of the castle, her magic spreading out floor to floor, beneath every stone, into each nook and cranny. She finds nothing. Of course she does. She would not have been given the opportunity to search had there been a possibility of discovery. 

“I will find her and then I will tear you limb from limb.”

This is met with a rolling of Maleficent’s eyes. 

“That’s a bit dramatic. Don’t you think?”

Not dramatic enough. Her panic is sitting close to the surface of her skin, ready to erupt at any moment. This is a game, a finely tuned art of landmines and hidden traps. Their meetings always are. She was never going to get Emma back on the first try; that’s not what this visit is about. She needs to find the right places to tread to advance. 

“What have you done to her?”

Not giving in, not showing any doubt at all, is the first step, giving no inroads, any flicker that the woman can seize and manipulate. 

Maleficent takes a slow, indulgent sip of her wine. 

“First overdramatic and now tedious.” With an arch of her eyebrow, she inhales. “But I will tell you this, if I _did_ have some wayward hostage floating about my castle the first thing I would do would be to find her biggest weakness and exploit it.”

Regina’s mind begins to whirl, trying to figure out what Emma’s biggest weakness might be. 

“Don’t strain yourself, Regina.” It’s a mocking form of care, her thought processes must be written all over her face. “I know the way you work. You make your pets dependent upon you. Completely and wholly and totally dependent upon you. Imagine the damage that could be done convincing one of them that you never really did care for them in the first place.”

The scoff is out of her throat before she can even think about it. 

Emma knows how much Regina cares for her, how much she needs her. They’ve battled and fought and loved and cried and kissed and fucked each other raw, their emotions bleeding out from every orifice. Emma is completely and wholly steeped in the way Regina is besotted with her. 

Emma is comfortable with her, Emma is happy with her, Emma finally feels secure in her place for the first time in her life. 

Regina’s eyes widen at the realization. The sudden and certain knowledge of just how easily that security can be ripped from Emma and the damage it would leave behind. The history she had used against her originally will now bring her low again. 

The taint of Emma’s fear riddled magic makes more sense now. 

“If you hurt her there will be no power in this land or any other to keep me from you.”

It’s there, a fraction of a second, so quickly she might not have seen it if she wasn’t looking. But she is looking. And she sees the flicker of fear in Maleficent’s eyes. 

“If you believe I have her, you can’t kill me.” The confidence and self-assurance that oozes from the woman is enough to make sparks of fire crackle at her fingertips. “Then you’ll never find her. And she’ll be abandoned, all alone, forever.”

Regina wants to throw her head back and howl. 

She cannot attack the sceptre, but it doesn’t stop her unleashing a stream of energy towards Maleficent, lifting the woman out of her chair and throwing her across the room to the stone fireplace. She’s one foot from the roaring flames, back pressed against the figures of dragons that guard the fire, and her teeth bite her lower lip in a mixture of fear and energy and the thrill of the hunt. 

“You really do love her, don’t you?”

Regina squeezes her fingers into a loose fist and Maleficent’s face turns a dark shade of red. 

The magic is coursing through her veins, darker and more seductive than she remembers it being. It’s been a long time since she unleashed fury over anyone. Suddenly she feels it roaring its freedom, like a caged animal let loose after too long in confinement. 

She opens her hand and Maleficent slides down the stone until her feet hit the floor. 

“This isn’t over.”

Brushing wrinkles from her gown, Maleficent takes a moment to allow her heavy gasping pants to subside to a more tolerable wheeze before she looks up and gestures between Regina and the exit. 

“It feels over to me, my Dear. Please take care to be more gentle with my doors as you leave.”

***

Emma is alone. 

Emma is alone in the room and her neck is raw and bleeding from the effort she has given trying to rip that damnable necklace from her throat. Her breath is coming hard, fast and uncontrollable. It hurts in her lungs to catch and hold a full breath. 

And she thinks _no_. 

The only word that goes through her head since Maleficent left her. No. No way. No how. She will not go through this again. She will not bow down to whatever sick game the woman wants to play. She will not be used and abused like a toy for vengeance. 

NO. 

She wants Regina, she wants her voice and her eyes and her smile and her touch and the way she needs Emma. She wants the woman who did the exact same thing to her she is rebelling against. 

It worked once, it might work again. 

It can’t; she won’t let it. 

She won’t, not for this woman who has no right to her, who stole her away from Regina and her family. 

There is no way Regina would give her away. She has told Emma again and again that they belong to each other and that Emma belongs to her, strictly and only her, nobody else. That Emma will be hers forever. It’s a litany she holds dear. 

She needs to. She needs to believe this. 

They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t let her go. Not her family. They need her. Snow needs her now. Lancelot needs her now. People need her. They do. They don’t want her gone. They don’t want to be free of her. 

She has never had a stable home longer than what she has found here. At least, not in her living memory. Her file says she stayed with the same family until she was three years old. She doesn’t remember it. She doesn’t even know if she believes it. It has never been replicated. 

This was going to break that pattern. She believed it. 

No, believes. She _believes_ it. Still. Present tense. They love her. They do. 

She thinks they do. 

***

Regina has tried. 

Regina has tried and tried and tried again. 

Regina closes her eyes, sets her hands flat on the table in front of her, and pushes her magic out again. Further. Harder. Searches. There is no sign of Emma. Not in this castle, not in this forest, not in this land. Not in the godforsaken realm. 

This is impossible. 

She recognised Maleficent’s magic the instant she accepted Snow hadn’t taken Emma away from her. The old jealousies and competitions and that last, lingering bitterness the woman held for the saviour who had killed her dragon form. They keep running through her head. 

And worse. 

The memories of what Maleficent is capable of won’t leave her. 

“Mom.” She can hear Henry, but she doesn’t respond. She can’t. She frowns in concentration and tries again. “Mom! Stop, you’re bleeding.”

Regina blinks her eyes open and lifts a finger to the thin, wet trail of blood running out of her left nostril. It comes away with a smear and she sniffs. Looking at Henry, she ties to give a weak smile. 

“It’s okay.” It’s not, not yet. “I need to do this.”

Maleficent has Emma, the only question is where she is holding her. 

And Regina will find out. 

“Mom!”

Regina needs to find out. 

“Regina?” Snow’s voice coming from nowhere makes her blink her eyes open again and the room only spins for a blurry, frightening second. “Regina, please, let’s find a different way.”

***

Six steps. Turn right. 

There is no exit that she can see.

Eight steps, turn right again. 

The walls seem to close in upon her with every breath she takes, an endless compression that squeezes the air from her lungs. Nine feet by twelve feet, barely enough room for the threadbare mattress in the corner, with no other elaboration at all. Bark and stark. 

It is driving Emma crazy. 

She paces and she sits still and then she paces some more. She comes up with elaborate plans of escape that go nowhere. She wears her voice ragged screaming at the walls, cursing Maleficent for bringing her here. 

Time is blurring. She does not know how long she has been here. It cannot have been more than a day, surely, possibly close to two, but there is no way to tell. No windows, no sky, no clocks and, sad to say, no mirrors. She’s been offered nothing to eat or drink, yet she is not hungry or thirsty. There are no amenities for any aspect of personal hygiene, yet she feels no need of any. 

It’s not a room; it’s a cell. 

An enchanted cell, that’s for sure, but a cell just the same. 

Her bare feet slap at the hard cement floor, one, two, relentless moving that has ceased to be about actively looking for a way out and more about the release of nervous energy that simmers under her skin. Six. Seven. She reaches the wall and spins around. 

“Hello, Princess.”

Only to come face to face with Maleficent. It makes her let out a pathetic little gasp that immediately puts her on the defensive. 

“You’re wasting your time.” The words aren’t even out of her mouth before she’s felled, the weight doubling her over. “I’m never going to give in to you.”

Collapsing to her knees is a matter of self-preservation.

Maleficent merely smiles down at her, the decorative hair decorations looking more like dragon horns than ever. 

“You are a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

Emma sets her jaw. 

“And you’re completely fucking insane.”

She’s propelled forward onto all fours to the sound of Maleficent’s chuckle. 

“Tell me, what exactly has Regina offered to inspire such loyalty?”

 _Everything_ , says the little voice that she clings to. Regina is everything and Regina gives everything. Perhaps not in the traditional sense, but Emma has never felt so secure with anyone the way she does when Regina claims her. Her knuckles flex, pushing against the cement and bracing herself for the inevitable. 

“Dragon slaying lessons.”

She has to drop her shoulder and roll onto her back with the force of the downward pull to stop it snapping her neck. Gasping for breath she looks up into the nonchalant face of her captor. Maleficent shrugs as if she has no care in the world, her right hand resting on an intricate sceptre. 

“I wouldn’t lie on my back if I were you, dear.” She says. “You’re just wilful enough to continue defying me. You might want to roll over onto your soft, weak little belly so that the pendant doesn’t crush your neck.”

Emma wants to spit. 

The gleam in her eye says Maleficent knows exactly what Emma is thinking. She kneels down so that she can place one delicate, treacherous hand on Emma’s abdomen. 

“Go ahead. Let’s see how far you get.”

It burns, both the necklace and the woman’s hand. But she doesn’t really have a choice and, after resisting for as long as she can, Emma exhales and obeys, rolling over to release the pressure. Sweet, cool oxygen flows back into her system and she feels light headed with relief. 

“You are so close.” Maleficent says quietly, almost a whisper, but she doesn’t seem the type to deign herself that far. “So close to giving in and letting me have my way.”

It’s a stroke, a caress. Both the hand on her spine, trailing warm patterns down her back through her dress, and the smooth honey voice that sounds full of approval. Emma shuts her eyes, squeezing the lids until she sees spots in the blackness, so she can block it out. Not her, not this woman. 

“Do you want to play a game?”

No. Emma turns her head so she’s facing away from Maleficent, her ear to the ground. Her belly shoves against the cement in fast, shallow pants. No, she doesn’t want to do anything with or for this woman. 

“It’s okay, Princess.” It would be soothing, the hand that strokes her back, up and down, light and soft and gentle, if it was anyone else. “I don’t expect you to do anything this early on. This one is all on me. All you have to do is open your eyes.”

No. No. 

She has no idea what’s going to happen, but she knows it’s not going to end well. 

“If you make me ask again, I’m not going to be so pleasant.”

There is just enough of a sharp threat in the voice and in the slight increase in pressure on her spine that Emma knows she has no other option. 

“Good girl.” Maleficent coos at her when she blinks open her eyes and Emma wants to curl up and die at the thrill it gives her against her will. “You’re very beautiful when you’re obedient.”

Sparks swirl in the air around them and, with the pressure easing from the weight around her neck, Emma lifts her head to watch them. Pinks and purples and greens dance in front of her eyes, she’s curious despite her distrust. 

“I bet you’re missing your Queen, aren’t you?”

Emma’s heart clenches and she knows what she’s going to see before the sparks even begin to merge, changing from light airy colours to darker shades and then, finally, to black. A long, lean, slender figure clad in black from head to toe. Stark and beautiful and heart achingly distant. 

The hall is one she knows well. Stone and dark themes and it feels like home. She knows Regina on sight, knows the shape of that face and the line of those cheekbones and the flawlessness of that olive skin. She knows it’s a memory by the gauntness of her face and the savage anger in her eyes. Emma recognises Maleficent a second later, the gloat on her face, spreading her arms out wide. 

_“Congratulations on exacting the curse. I’m a bit disappointed you went to all that trouble only to have the orphaned whelp of Snow White break it.”_

_As she is with Emma, Maleficent seems intent on goading Regina into action._

_“All curses can be broken, dear. Even you know that.”_

_But unlike Emma, this Regina is more than capable of sticking up for herself._

_“Yes, yes, yes. Well. So, where is she? Word is you’ve gotten yourself a new… plaything.”_

_“She’s not here.”_

_Emma half expects this Regina to defend her, to harm Maleficent for speaking so casually and callously about her._

_“That’s a shame. She and I have a score to settle. I’d rather hoped you’d like to share this one.”_

_There is barely a tensing of Regina’s jaw and all Emma can do is watch as Maleficent’s face sparks with glee. “Well, that’s new. This puppy must have teeth. And here I remember someone telling me that love was weakness, even for our pets.”_

_Maleficent’s words lift her up, but Emma is merely an observer, helpless to everything except watching the casual shrug of Regina’s shoulders, as if she hadn’t heard the momentous claim._

_“Firstly, if I remember correctly, Maleficent, you have a tendency to break my things.”_

_“The boy was weak, but we both know girls take a bit of extra play.”_

_Emma shivers at the thought._

_“Secondly, this isn’t for pleasure.” Emma wants this memory Regina to fight for her, to not speak the words she fears are coming. But the steely determination in her Queen’s eyes, the lack of emotion, make her stomach plummet as the cold, clear, precise words speak clearly. “She’s instrumental in my plan to torture Snow White. Once that has been accomplished, and if she is still of any use after that, you are quite welcome to her.”_

Emma’s eyes close again and her body sags back down to the floor. 

Even without the weight. 

“It took longer than she thought.” Maleficent’s gentle, unwelcome, soothing hand leaves her back and settles on the crown of her head, sliding down to the side of her face to brush tangles of her hair back behind her ear. “But she’s done with you now. And I think you have many uses left.”

There was no flicker of a lie in that memory. 

***

“Who knew?”

Snow reels back as Regina turns on her. 

“What?”

There is frustration and panic and fear in those eyes, eyes she usually associates with anger and hatred and scorn. She doesn’t take it personally. 

“Who knew she was going to be here? Who knew _I_ was going to be here?”

Everybody knew. It’s an absurd question. The castle has been planning Christmas celebrations for months now, especially given the recent birth of the new prince. Folk not living at the castle any more had visited in the last few weeks to pay their respects, to welcome the young babe, and any one of those would have known that Emma was here. 

Would have known that Emma was the child’s main caretaker. 

That Emma has stayed here so long has been of great interest to the surrounding villagers. People have come to talk with her, celebrate with her, and wish her well. Of course the knowledge that Regina herself would be visiting was circulated. 

Everybody knew. 

It is then, trying to puzzle this out, that Snow understands the implication. 

“You think one of my _friends_ has been tipping off Maleficent?”

That someone she knows and trusts, someone she has let around not only her daughter, but her grandson and her baby, has betrayed them so heinously is an obscene thought, one she can barely grasp. 

“Yes.” Regina wastes no time and no pleasantries. “Nobody from my castle would do so. There _is_ nobody from my castle. It has to be one of your people. She knew. She knew which room was Emma’s, she knew I would be here, she knew that leaving that talisman would fool Emma. She got it into Emma’s chamber. She knew.”

It’s a frightening thought that sends ice water down her spine. 

“I… I don’t…”

She can think of nobody who would do such a thing. Not Red or Granny or Ella, not any of her dwarves. But the villagers have come over the past few weeks and she has not been there to greet them. She has no idea who has been to the castle or not. 

“The magic was blue.” Regina points out. “It was Maleficent’s magic, but she would have gotten a spell that powerful from somewhere and it was blue.”

“No.” Snow shakes her head. “Not Blue. It can’t…”

But they have spoken little with Blue in the years past. Since that one last stand at Regina’s castle. Her anger over the words of Rumplestiltskin and the truths he had bombarded her with sludging through her system like thick bitter treacle. 

“Red.” Her voice turns sharp and pointed and coolly even. “Fetch me the Blue Fairy.”

***

Emma sits on the ground, knees drawn up and hugging them to her chest. There’s a slight rocking motion she would be unaware of, but for the fact that her spine rolls bump, bump, bump, against the stone. 

One word keeps pulsing through her brain: Regina. 

_Regina, Regina, Regina_. 

She wants Regina. She’s scared; scared of Maleficent, scared of the pain she knows is in store, scared of her instinctual reactions to the pain and reward system that she’s being exposed to, the same system that broke her down once before. 

It’s in her brain; an image of Regina. Her own dark lodestone. Hair longer here in this world than she ever saw back in that long lost land. She cannot remember when she stopped thinking of there as home. Only that the cold stone floor of Regina’s castle, the warmth of furs on her bed, the ease of their magic together like breathing, that is what feels like home to her. 

She was born in fire and pain in both worlds, the only difference being that the terror here might have been extreme, but it ended after only a few months. Twenty eight years in the last world and she was still alone and abandoned and afraid in scars so deep that not even the promise of Henry could ease them. 

_Regina, Regina, Regina_.

Regina stole her, Regina claimed her, Regina fought hard to keep her and nobody has ever done that for her. She feels safer with Regina than she has ever felt with anyone. She knows her place and her boundaries and what she can and cannot do. She even knows that mistakes, while punished, will be tolerated. 

Except, that line is blurring. Maleficent’s voice is seeping into her ears and, without a counterpoint argument, she is helpless to resist. Nothing is and nothing has ever been permanent. 

Her back rattles against the stone and she does not notice. 

And if she hates Maleficent, fights her with her very being, how can she condone what Regina has done to her? How can she look back on those months of fear and blood and terror and not crumble away from her?

She remembers Regina begging her to leave, demanding that she return to Snow, telling her that her choice could not be trusted because she was unable to make one. At the time she believed that to be false. 

But she’s not too sure anymore. 

This land is broken. She has always known that. Known it since she woke up in a dungeon and felt electricity pour into her skin from the woman who was once nothing more than a spiteful mayor. 

The walls are shaking. 

She has magic and she has learned to control it, but she will never master it the way Regina has. Will never harness it with the same potential for cruelty and pain that Regina has. She is a child compared to her Queen, powerless and defenceless. And she has no way of knowing what will happen if Regina decides to use that against her again.

Regina has trained the perfect little pet who cannot stand up against her, even if it is a matter of life and death. 

Emma wants Regina, she wants her, she needs her. But she doesn’t want this land. 

_Please,_ her mind thinks with all the strength she can muster, _please take me away from here_. 

She does not notice the swirls of pinkish red smoke that curl around her ankles.

***

They have the force of Regina’s magic. They have the force of the fairies. They have Red and Granny and a satchel of fairy dust ready to trap Maleficent. 

Regina is not sure they have enough to win. 

She has to believe that they do. The little blue bitch resisted them at first, but Regina had almost forgotten about Snow’s ability to emotionally manipulate those around her into paroxysms of guilt, all without blinking an eye. 

Not to mention a few well-placed threats. 

Now they know the spells Maleficent is using. The one to keep Emma’s magic benign and the one to shield her from being found. And now they have the counter spells. It’s powerful magic that they’re dealing with and not simple at all. Maleficent has gone to a lot of trouble to make this happen and Regina wants to kick herself. 

Maleficent waited over sixteen years to get her revenge with Aurora. Two years in comparison to that is a blink of the eye. She had been foolish to let her guard down, long term plans are her specialty. 

But she’s not alone. Regina has her own penchant for keeping grudges and exacting revenge. 

And this time the revenge is completely justified. 

She has no mercy left for this woman, none at all. So when they storm the castle, Regina takes just a little extra satisfaction in the woman’s expression when she realises she’s trapped by a handful of fairy dust, her magic incapacitated. 

The sceptre falls to the floor. 

“I told you.” She seethes, nearly shaking with the need to exact pain. “I told you I would be back.”

The slight spark of fear she’d seen the last time she was here returns, bigger than ever, obvious now. 

“Regina.” Maleficent, always calm and naturally antagonistic, shows her first real sliver of vulnerability. “I…”

But she doesn’t get to finish whatever she’d been about to say. Regina lets a stream of magic loose in a way she hasn’t felt in years. The scream that sounds is loud and pained and awful to hear. Much too rewarding for comfort. 

“Regina.” It might be Snow’s voice beside her, she is incapable of caring. “Not like this.”

It comes in waves, hours of panic and anger and helplessness and worry, out of her hands like a dam finally bursting. She’s lost in it now, unable to stop, throwing her head back and closing her eyes to feel the beauty of the magic released and relentless against this woman who hurt her Emma. 

“Regina!” A hand lands on her left shoulder, hesitant but firm. “Regina, look.”

It’s not anger or derision in his voice, James is full of concern and this is what makes her blink back into focus, tuning out the limp and twitching woman held in stasis in front of her. She follows his hand as it points to the floor. 

The sceptre had cracked in the fall and rolled to the side. Swirling red mist leaks out of it as it begins to spin. 

“Emma.”

Regina barely has to turn to the Blue fairy before the annoying little smurf is unleashing a fine dusting of powder over it. The spinning becomes rattling, jerking the shaft across the floor, a violent sort of rocking. 

She takes a step forward and feels a smaller, softer hand hold her back by the elbow. 

The glass ball shatters, sending shards spinning into the air with lethal force. She barely gets the shield up in time and they watch as the sharp pieces clatter against the bubble surrounding them. 

It’s Regina that notices the stone room that has just appeared. 

Regina, that notices there’s nobody inside. 

And Regina that recognises the heady flavour of Emma’s magic. 

She bursts forward out of Snow’s grasp, breaking the shield like a bubble as she surrounds herself in the remains of heady magic, kneels down on the floor and closes her eyes, trying to feel, trying to reach out. Emma was here, she knows that, can feel the woman’s presence strong and unfiltered as though she was here seconds ago. 

But Emma is gone again. 

They are seconds too late. 

“Where.” She spins on her knees, pushing up to a stand. “Where did she go?”

The flickering of blue feathers around her head makes her want to swat at them like a fly, but she holds herself still. 

“Away.” Breathes Blue, her face pale. “When we released the wards, her magic came back. Consciously or not, she transported herself somewhere. She’s gone…”

The voice trails off and Regina sets her jaw. 

“Blue.” Pleads Snow. “Blue, where has she gone?”

Blue does not want to answer, even Regina can read that in her face. 

“She’s gone to a land…” It comes out like an apology and Blue is unable to meet any of their eyes. “… a land without magic.”

***

To be continued...


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody is immune to loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. Both for the time it took to update and for the ending. Yes, I know. 
> 
> **A/N:** The views and/or actions expressed within this fic by fictional characters do not necessarily reflect my own views, nor are they actions I would take in similar situations, were they to present themselves in my own personal life (give or take magical variances, because I'm not likely to come across those). Post Partum Depression is a serious thing and should be treated by qualified persons, or if not at least with understanding by those nearby. I have had my own personal experiences with PPD, both untreated and treated. Please do not message me telling me how wrongly it was dealt with in this chapter, I understand.

***

Drops of icy water hitting her forehead wake Emma up.

She’s curled up on a pile of leaves and vines, green and lush and soft, but underneath feels harder than earth. Her nose wrinkles to the scent of rotting and decay. She opens her eyes to blink at the image of a cream ceiling, cream walls and a large jagged fissure running through both. The sky poking through is dark grey and the rain pours freely.

Her hands push down on wet, mulchy leaves, ripe with mud and rain and the dank lack of air. They feel slimy against her fingers and she winces as she pushes herself up. Her gown is wet in patches and sticks to her skin as she wipes her hands clean.

The rotten smell makes itself known as she looks over to see a bed, soggy and black with giant spots, sunken in the middle and taken over by moss. 

There’s a set of drawers on either side of the bed, one lying on its side and its contents spilled and spoiled among the wreckage. But one thing catches her eye, a spark of silver among the greens, browns and blacks that cover the room. 

She picks it up delicately between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. It’s a photo frame, crusted with grime and age and oxidisation. Biting her lip and wrinkling her nose, she scrapes a segment from the glass and gasps. 

Henry. 

More specifically; Henry and Regina. 

She looks around again, eyes taking in the detail of the room underneath the forest that has taken it over. She’s never been here before, but she knows. This is Regina’s room. This is Regina’s house. 

This is Storybrooke. 

***

Emma has to take a step back once she finally manages to open the bedroom door. 

It took her a good half hour to pull the vines and debris from the rusted hinges and that was after ransacking what was left of Regina’s closet. Nothing survived. All the clothes have rotted through and she’s fairly sure her dress won’t last that much longer. It’s seeping the moisture out of the humid biosphere and clinging even worse than when she woke up. 

Now she’s staring at the trunk of a huge tree, maybe ten feet wide, that splits the house in two, rising up from the broken, shattered floor and spreading its branches into every room and through floor boards and walls. 

Okay then. 

It’s a delicate process. The wood of the staircase is fragile at best, broken or ready to break at worst, and wrapped around the tree. She has to manipulate her way down with gentle treading, pressing down with each foot slowly to test her weight on the steps, inching past the earthy green scent of the tree trunk and squeezing her way between it and the wall. 

Her lungs breathe a sigh of relief when her feet make contact with solid ground. It squishes under her bare toes and she wishes she had at least put on her shoes before the necklace. The thought makes her reach up, but it’s only a thin chain of metal now that there is no magic and she easily wrenches it from her neck. The links scatter and she drops the rest into the murky green mulch, wishing she could do the same to Maleficent. 

She hasn’t been here much before, only a few times years ago. The inside of the house is dark and gloomy, hidden under an umbrella of tree canopy that heavily filters any daylight that might break through. Electricity doesn’t even occur to her, not at first, it’s been so long since that’s been a part of her daily life.

Either way, there is none of that. 

It’s the gruesome discovery she makes when she reaches the kitchen. The stench is overwhelming, food remnants green and solidified and petrified in clumps inside the open hanging door of what was once a fridge, the overturned curve of a fruit bowl, the murky insides of cupboards with their doors either hanging from the hinges or torn completely off. 

Somewhere, in the depths of her blurry and far-fetched childhood, the image of a stick thin twelve year old girl hopefully scanning a box comes to mind. There are always boxes in kitchens. Her stomach begins to growl at the thought, the days she spent in that strange white room of Maleficent’s suddenly making themselves known as her hunger returns. 

A low groan of approval rumbles out of her throat as she eyes the relatively dry unopened box of oreos in her hand. 

If anybody ever asks about this moment in her future, she is definitely not going to tell them about how her hands are shaking as she fumbles at the cardboard, slightly warped and wrinkled, and how she grits her teeth in frustration as she struggles with the foil package on the inside. 

She’s unprepared for the heady, rich, and unfamiliar scent of chocolate and crème filling that hits her nostrils and makes her belly flutter. 

The first bite is heaven, despite the cookie that clings to her teeth and the roof of her mouth, and she mashes the rest of it in, chomping down eagerly. Sugar. Refined sugar. Unpronounceable ingredients. It hits her blood the next instant, making her dizzy, her skin buzzing at the end of her nerves. It settles low in her stomach, thick and nauseating, and she tries to cough through it. 

Her shoulders sag as she realises her body _wants_ fruits picked fresh from the garden, roast boar killed, gutted and skinned that very day, crisped on a spit spinning in a giant fireplace as it crackles in the background of her life, coarse bread milled from handpicked wheat and mixed with warm, frothy milk fresh from a cow. 

Emma opens her jaw and clicks her tongue, trying to dislodge sticky cookie mush from her gums. 

She wonders what her Queen is doing now. What her entire family thinks about her disappearance. None of her options are desirable. They either know where she is or they don’t; it doesn’t change the fact they are unable to reach her and she does not have the faintest clue how to reach them. If she doesn’t get back to them somehow, she wonders what they’ll tell Henry and how long it will take for them to stop looking altogether. 

The thought of Regina makes her square her shoulders.

If this is Regina’s house, there will be others. Perhaps not all of them as run down as this one. There will be a grocery store with a multitude of supplies, a hospital with extra support that has floors in better condition than here, cars, clothes, perhaps a veritable multitude of things to make life easier. 

Emma has hit survival mode. 

***

She is not prepared to leave the house. 

The first time she manages to clear the doorway and wrench the warped and twisted wood from the frame, Emma turns around and heads straight back inside, ready to crawl into a ruined cupboard and hide until everything just goes away. She doesn’t actually crawl inside any kind of storage area, but she does make herself a nest of forest debris, all leaves and earthy smells in Regina’s bedroom where she stays for three days. 

Three days of curling up and ignoring her problems, looking at the ancient frame that cannot be more than four years old, foraging in the ruins of the kitchen for food that isn’t petrified or rotten. 

That box of oreos lasts for one and a half, her mouth and tongue getting used to the overpoweringly chemical chocolate, her blood singing from the sugar high. None of the pipes are connected or whole, all of them rusted and broken, there isn’t even a tap to turn on, but she is not Snow White’s daughter for nothing. They have had more than one trip into the forests of their land to share survival tips. Snow does love coaching her daughter. 

And Emma breaks off green leaves from the giant tree and suckles the moisture from inside them. 

There is no sign of Regina or magic or the land she has left behind. She would give anything to hear Regina’s voice, the deep smoky tones of command laced with warmth, to feel the lightest caress that can turn firm at any moment. 

What she hears is Maleficent’s voice in a constant loop, _it took longer than she thought, but she’s done with you now_. She refuses to believe that. She has to. There was no sign, none, none that she’d seen before she’d been whisked away. Nothing to point to the fact that Regina was tiring of her. 

Quite the opposite. 

They’d been happy. At least, Emma had been happy. She is fairly sure Regina had been. The fact that the distance is making her question that fact makes her unsure, makes her question everything, question herself. 

Curling up among the rushes, Emma remembers foster homes and that ever present knowledge of impermanence. Nothing lasts for Emma, nothing good, and she’s an idiot for believing that this would too. 

On the third day, Emma blinks and takes a breath. Survival mode. She can do this. She has to do this. 

She was wrong: this is not a town. 

Regina’s house, it seems, is the anomaly. This is a forest with random bricks and ruined walls scattered throughout. There is very little that resembles actual buildings and certainly nothing that might distinguish which building was which. 

Snow told her that Storybrooke was nothing but forest before the town appeared. The forest seems to have reappeared and grown for another thirty years. Giant trees hundreds, probably thousands of years old, their trunks wider than her arms could possibly fit around crowd the space. All she can see is green and muted shades of brown. 

The air is earthy and ripe with life, sounds of insects and birds and small animals. 

She can’t orient herself, trying to imagine the layout of the town as it used to be but there is nothing to landmark. Regina’s house has shifted and broken and there is nothing to suggest the neat, manicured lawn or hedges that used to be there. Her garden is gone. The street is gone. 

The best she can do is to approximate, think perhaps that the road may have taken this route. That maybe the houses making up Regina’s old neighbours used to line the path she is treading. Leaves crunch under her steps and she treads carefully, the skin of her feet sensitive to the twigs and rocks that find it. 

Sweat trickles down the back of her neck and between her breasts, even though the air is crisp and beginning to chill, it must be sometime late in the fall. She has no extra clothing, certainly no leather jacket of her past and no fur lined cloak that she is more used to. She’s going to have to come up with a plan and fast. 

Her stomach growls and it aches, grinding into itself, and she grits her teeth as she wishes she had more of the empty, sugary oreos in their crumpled packet. 

After nearly an hour of treading through forest and wild plants, hoping she is heading somewhere towards where the town centre used to be, Emma catches the glint of something out of the corner of her eye. It’s a spark of hope, a calling card; a miracle in this nightmare she is currently living. 

Yellow. 

Yellow metal. 

Something from outside Storybrooke; something that the curse didn’t create and that the curse could not swallow back. 

Her bug. 

Emma cries out in triumph, her voice cracking under the pressure as she picks up her pace, stumbling over tree roots as she fights vines that almost seem as if they’re coming alive to hold her back. 

She doesn’t hear the rustling in the forest brush nearby. 

***

By the time she finds an appropriately slender, straight, flexible stick long enough to jimmy the door open without snapping off half way through, Emma is nearly in tears. 

She doesn’t remember it being this difficult, then again, she had tools of the trade even when she was a teenager. This is improvisation. The only thing keeping her from giving up and smashing the window open is the memory that she had prepared the bug for leaving town before Henry had swallowed the turnover. 

It has a full gas tank, all her worldly belongings are in the trunk. If she is stuck in this land for any length of time and winter does hit, she might need to hole up inside and turn the heater on, surround herself with clothes and her blanket. 

There’s a very, very faint voice in the back of her head, slight and whispery that she ignores, steadfastly ignores, telling her that a full tank of gas could get her over the town line and back into Boston. 

That’s not what she wants, that’s not what she will ever think about. She’s going to wait here in Storybrooke, the town that no longer exists, and wait for Regina or _anyone_ from the Enchanted Forest to find her. 

Her fingers are swollen and nicked bloody by the time she actually hears the click of the door lock and she wastes no time tossing the stick behind her and wrenching the door open. The car itself is at an odd angle, tilted with the driver side higher than the others as a giant tree root pushes up from the ground. 

Climbing into the seat gives her vertigo as she slams the door closed behind her, but it’s heaven; sitting on a soft seat that is dry and comfortable and safe. Exhaustion takes her over and her eyes close, her brain swimming in a murky darkness that claims her. 

Just before she crosses the line from consciousness to sleep, Emma hears a low growling sound that makes her brows furrow, but it’s too late to wake up properly and her head slumps against the window. 

***

Regina’s head is going to explode. 

She’s sitting at a desk, surrounded by tomes and tomes of ancient magic that she’s summoned from her castle plus books that they managed to convince Belle to give them, straight out of the Dark One’s library. 

Everywhere she looks is dead end upon dead end. 

Rumple took centuries to concoct a plan to transverse realms. Magical beans are another possibility, but there are none to be had thanks to mankind’s penchant for murder, theft, and greed. Every time there is a spark of hope, it tends to be crushed immediately, cruelly and totally. And Regina is getting more and more on edge. 

Sparks erupted from her fingertips and followed Red out of the library yesterday. 

Today she even snapped at Henry. 

Poor, poor Henry who only has the best of intentions and she can’t, she absolutely can’t take this out on him. She apologised immediately, regretful and sincere and frightened, so very frightened it would be the thing to turn him back against her. It didn’t; he’d merely smiled in understanding and nodded, before leaving her alone. 

But just because she’s making attempts for him, doesn’t mean anyone else has carte blanche on her good intentions. 

“Leave. Me. Alone.”

It’s almost as if nobody is afraid of her anymore. 

This is ridiculous. 

“I’m only offering help.” Comes the squeaking voice, tiny and small and much too knowledgeable for her comfort. It makes her spine twitch. “I know you think it’s a worthless offer, but at one time and for several years, I knew you Regina. I helped you then. Let me help you now.”

She grits her teeth and swats at the bug flying to her left. Jiminy easily flies out of her reach before settling on the desk in front of her. 

“I don’t need your help. I’m only here to get Emma back, then you won’t need to bother about me again. Trust me, I’m not going to linger.”

“Nobody is immune to loss…”

Her hand slams down barely an inch from his little green body before he can finish and she notices the flinch that crosses his insect sharp features as he hops onto the pages she was just reading. 

“This is not loss.” It can’t be. “Emma is not gone. She’s alive and we will get her back.”

“That’s not what I meant, I only thought you might need a professional ear to help you with…”

Regina’s hand curls into a fist and her jaw clenches. 

“Professional what? You’re a bug that got a degree from a curse. You are perhaps the last person to help me with anything, let alone what few feelings I have left.”

He opens his mouth to speak again but Regina’s nerves are faster and her wrist flicks. 

“For goodness sake, just stop fluttering about!”

There’s a flash and a loud crash and Regina doesn’t honestly know what her intention was other than to get rid of the annoying little bug, but she is not sure who is more surprised. Herself, or the man crouched on top of the desk staring at her in shock. 

Neither of them blink for an absurd amount of time. Regina for one is not going to move her eyes. 

The door to the library slams open and several people run in at once. She’s both grateful for the intrusion and surprised, given that most people of late have been scared to approach her without a lot of caution. 

“Jiminy!” Red calls out in glee, running forward almost immediately to grab the man scrambling from the table to stand behind the chair opposite Regina into a hug. “Oh my goodness, you’re back, look at you!”

“Uh…” Jiminy mumbles, blinking owlishly without glasses, his face turning a deep red. “Yes, it would seem so.”

Charming stands just inside the door, looking anywhere but at the joyous reunion in front of him. 

“Uh… welcome back, Jiminy.” He stutters and then points to the open door. “I’ll, uh… I’ll go get you some pants.”

Later, when the man is dressed and they’ve made their way to the great hall so that everyone can welcome him back to his human form, Regina is still not very interested in socialising with anyone in this castle beyond Henry. 

“That was a good thing you did.”

She looks at Snow standing to her right, quiet and small with shadows under her eyes and doesn’t really have the heart to sneer at her just then. They both stand separate and aside from the group, neither wanting nor able to fully join in. 

“Not particularly.”

“It was.” Snow insists, in that slightly breathy way she has retained from girlhood that makes Regina want to smack her about the face and teach her how to inhale and exhale properly. “He’s been a cricket for two years. He must be very grateful.”

Grateful is not exactly the word she would choose, remembering the wide eyed shocked expression on his face when he first realised what had happened. 

“It was fairly simple, I don’t know why the Blue Fairy didn’t do it when we first came back to this land. It was her spell that originally turned him into a cricket, was it not?”

She doesn’t need to look to know that Snow’s expression turns from slight confusion to realisation and hardens just that little bit. The Blue Fairy now has her own cell down in the caves next to Rumplestiltskin. 

Two criminals that may see the light of day sooner than hoped, if their researching cannot come up with any feasible attempts at reaching Emma. Regina grits her teeth. Asking either of those two for help is not something she relishes. 

“Any luck?” Snow asks into the uncomfortable silence that follows. 

_About as much luck as you have bonding with your son_ , the response comes to her so automatically that she almost blurts it out, but she doesn’t. She is not here to cause trouble. She is not here to kick someone when they are down, no matter how much she would have relished the opportunity in time gone by. She is here to bring Emma back and nothing else. 

“No.” She mumbles instead. “I keep hitting the same roadblocks. Dark curses. Magic Beans. Mermaids. None of which we have.”

“Mermaids?” Snow perks up instantly. “I knew a mermaid once!”

Her good will only stretches so far. 

“And you were one for about five minutes, if I recall. What a pity you gave those fins back.” 

It’s not a bad idea, actually, perhaps she should turn Snow into a fish and rescue Emma that way. Of course, the spell is not that simple and without the original mermaid wishing on an octopus for legs, things are awesomely complicated. Not that she wants to tempt the wrath of Ursula again after the fall out from that. 

At the crushed expression on Snow’s face, Regina sighs. 

“We’ve been here over two years with no sign of any mermaids, let alone your friend. You’re welcome to send out a scuba search party, but I have better things to do with my time.”

They’re at a sad little standstill. Everyone else in the room is celebrating Jiminy’s return, but the shadow of Emma hangs over both Snow and Regina without letting go. 

“It’s been a week.” Snow whispers. “A week.”

Regina’s jaw aches she’s grinding her teeth that hard, trying not to imagine her pet, lovely lonely Emma abandoned in a world without magic, without the reassurance she lives for.

“I know how long it’s been.”

The soft sounds of a baby’s cry echo through the hall. 

Snow doesn’t blink. 

***

Jiminy treads carefully as he walks the hall down towards the library. 

He’s still unsteady on his feet, these big, ungainly limbs and heavy appendages making him slow, James’ pants loose around his hips. He is a hundred times bigger than he was, but the castle feels twice that much bigger when he has to walk the stone floor instead of flying.

Regina sits alone at a table, a plate abandoned next to an empty chalice. The food is untouched, but the wine is gone. He’s not surprised. His eyes pick up the straight spine, the rigid way she holds herself, and the weary expression she would not allow anyone to see if she knew they were there. 

His throat gives a gentle cough to introduce his presence. 

Her head flies up and her eyes narrow upon opening, one brow rising in a silent question that almost looks like a threat. He wasn’t lying before, he wants to help her get through this. Like most people, he has mixed feelings about this woman. 

She was, and in some ways always will be, the Evil Queen that laid waste to entire lands in her search for Snow White, intent on murder. The memory of the terror she rained down on Emma is fresh in everyone’s mind. 

But so is the last two years. Emma is Regina’s staunchest and loudest supporter. And Emma’s obvious happiness is proof of her hype. It is undeniable that things have changed, but it is hard to forget everything else. 

So too is it hard to forget those twenty eight years he spent as the occasional sounding box for Mayor Mills. He had been one of the privileged few residents of the town that she had treated with some measure of respect and reciprocity. She had spoken to him in a professional sense more than once. 

Regina is human, in the worst and best of ways, and she takes everything to the extreme. 

“I… I was… I…” Human stuttering has returned and he shuts his eyes to take a breath, tries to calm the riotous noise inside his head before continuing. “I was wondering if we could talk?”

The muscle of her right cheek twitches. 

“Just because you’re human again, does not mean I want to begin spilling my darkest secrets. Please go.”

He shakes his head, frustrated at his inability to speak plainly and with any sense of authority. 

“No. I’m not here for that.” Her brows furrow in response. “I… I have to thank you for trying to help me.”

His voice is weak and he curses the sound of the tremble. 

“But…?” 

Her eyes spark with knowledge even as she prompts him. She knows, he can tell, and she’s going to make him say the words out loud. 

“Please.” He can feel the heat of his cheeks, the unfamiliarly large amount of warm blood flooding his skin and pumping through his veins. “I appreciate it, I do, but… please… can you make me a cricket again?”

He hates begging and he’s sure she sees it as nothing but a weakness, but he needs this. 

Her complete lack of surprise should surprise him, but it doesn’t. 

“Are you sure?”

This is why he came to her. Not just because it was her magic, that is a large part, but because anyone else despite their good intentions would have immediately begun trying to talk him out of it, would try to convince him to remain in human form. 

It’s easier for them if he’s a person. 

“I like being a cricket.” The words sound ridiculous, but their truth is easy. “It’s… it was my greatest wish and my greatest peace. I know, I know I can choose how I live and I’m not under the rule of my parents as I once was, but… being a cricket makes me happy.”

“Are you not lonely as the only sentient cricket here?”

It’s a reasonable question and his traitorous human skin flushes again. 

“All my friends are here, whether I am a cricket or a human; that is no problem for me.” He knows what she’s asking, but he has no words for the answer. “As for anything else… I have no need for it. I am happier as a bug.”

The term has been used as an insult against him, but he refuses to take it as one. 

Regina nods once and her hand raises. His eyes watch her wrist like it is the last drop of water in an arid, bone dry desert. He feels it as a crack, loud and sudden and violent.

But then all he feels is free as the giant clothes slip off his winged form. 

***

Red hums in the back of her throat, bouncing slightly on her toes as she rocks Lancelot back and forth. 

He is turning into quite the perceptive little infant, picking up on moods faster than she can smell them out, so she has to force herself to remain calm, to keep her arms soft and fluid and her voice soft. 

But inside, inside her nerves are jingling and stretched tight. 

He is definitely missing Emma. And that, that is the problem. He is not even two months old. He should not notice whether or not his older sister is there. He cannot see well enough note faces and his brain isn’t developed enough to remember people. 

The only person he should be concerned with is his mother, noting her by scent and sound and comfort only. 

Her eyes narrow as the chamber door opens and Snow finally shuffles in. 

“You’re back.”

Soft, soft happy voice. But she obviously isn’t as good at that as she thinks, because Snow looks up in surprise and automatically defensive. 

“Of course I’m back.”

“Your son is hungry.”

Red does not need wolf sense to see the large sigh and drop of shoulders that happen right in front of her. Snow is exhausted and apathetic and frustrated. 

And scared.

“I was busy.” Red’s ears twitch at the water weak sound of the excuse. “Regina thinks she has some way to…”

“Your son.” Her voice is steel, uncompromising and hard as it has never been with her closest friend. “Is hungry.”

Snow looks at her like a stranger, narrowed eyes full of anger, disbelief and panic. 

“And my daughter is missing!”

Lancelot begins to wail and Ruby gives up all pretence. 

She wants to lay everything down and wrap her arms around Snow and soothe her, comfort and coddle and smother her with love. She wants to be nice and gentle and give her the time she needs. But the situation here is getting out of control and everyone else is too frightened to lay down the truths. 

“Your daughter?” It comes out like an explosion, pent up and bitten back and growing insidious in the past week, the past months. “Your daughter! You have a lot of nerve calling Emma your daughter.”

If she wasn’t holding Lancelot, Red is certain Snow would hit her. 

“I’m trying.” Snow is almost spitting, the words flung out viciously, but there are tears in her eyes, long held back. “I’m doing everything I can! Everything! My daughter has disappeared and gone back to that godforsaken land and she’s been all alone two weeks now and I am running myself ragged doing everything I can to bring her back! Don’t you dare say…!”

The baby wails between them and Red bounces on her toes, acutely aware of her attempts to comfort the child that Snow hasn’t even looked at. 

“Everything.” She agrees calmly. “Except the very thing Emma needs you to do.”

Snow blinks, momentarily stunned into silence. Red doesn’t pause. 

“You are a fool if you think Regina is doing any less than you, if you think Regina isn’t killing herself to bring Emma back. Things will not fall apart if you take twenty minutes from researching magic you have no clue about to deal with your infant son and let those grossly more qualified do the work.”

There are tears and it hurts, it physically hurts Red to make Snow cry, but there are a lot of things that need to be said. 

“Tell me, Snow, because I am very interested to hear your take on this, tell me why you think Emma stayed here so long looking after both you and Lancelot?” There are excuses ready, on the tip of Snow’s tongue, and Red can smell them before they are even spoken. “And don’t tell me it’s because she feels some weird sense of duty, because you were the one who cared for her. I mean, I’m sure that’s part of it, but you have a husband and more friends than you can count in this castle. Any one of us could have done the job that Emma has been doing. Why do you think she felt it necessary to be the one?”

Snow takes a step back, her eyes clouding with confusion and denial and the fear of what is about to be said. 

“Emma has been hurt in her life, by a lot of people. But the thing that hurt Emma the most, that still hurts her, is a childhood of being unloved and unwanted.” It’s a flinch, a physical thing as if Red has actually hit her, but Red continues anyway, too far into the dialogue to stop now. “And she was doing her very best to personally make sure that her brother didn’t suffer a mother who didn’t love him.”

Red watches Snow’s head shake from side to side, a slow realisation, a denial. 

A plea for reassurance. 

“So please, tell me how much you’re honouring your daughter, spending all of your time doing research you know nothing about, while condemning her brother to the same fate. How much will Emma thank you for prioritising her over your son?”

Snow is shocked still. 

And Red takes the opportunity to step forward and place the whimpering, squirming bundle in her arms, taking Snow’s hands and wrapping them around her son. 

“Snap out of it, Snow. Both your children need you.”

***

He’s quiet and he’s observant and too many people overlook that fact. 

He’s thirteen, not really ten anymore, and he’s lived enough in both world to know how things are and aren’t supposed to be. Henry resisted this land at first, thrown headfirst and suddenly into a confusing world of terror and magic and histories loaded like minefields that any misstep might have caused shockwaves so large that they never would have recovered. 

At first, in those first few months, he’d believed that they couldn’t recover. His mother had reverted straight back to the Evil Queen mode and it had taken him, and everyone else besides Emma, too long to recognise it for the defence mechanism it actually was. Emma knew, instantly and dreadfully and painfully, she’d seen it before anyone else and had responded to it. 

They’re good for each other now, in ways sometimes he cannot even understand, but he accepts it more readily than he did in that first year. He’s seen firsthand Emma’s recovery after the initial torture. He’s seen them both together when he has visited their castle. 

And he has not seen either of them at peace as much as they are when they’re together. 

They’re unconventional, by the standards of both worlds, sure, but they work together and they need each other and he sits daily watching his mother languish as she researches books and spells and incantations until her fingers cramp and her right eye twitches with the budding migraines. 

His grandparents sometimes still act as if they are a temporary thing; that someday eventually, sooner or later, something will happen that will cause Emma to leave Regina for good. It’s harder for them to accept, as it is the rest of the land, because they do not see the two of them alone together. 

He has. He has seen Regina’s warm smile when Emma isn’t looking. He has seen the glow in Emma’s eyes when Regina trails a finger across her shoulder. And he knows there are aspects of their relationship that people frown on, that he doesn’t understand and doesn’t really want to, but it seems to work for them and they’re happy. 

And that’s all he needs to know. 

Henry squares his jaw and steps into the darkness. 

His boots thump into the dirt packed floor and his eyes search for the flickering of orange up ahead. The sconce that lights the way. The guards were tricky, but he is not the son of the Evil Queen and the Savior and the grandson of Snow White and Prince Charming for nothing. They’d grinned as he bought them a tray of roasted fowl and cups of beer. 

Then they’d frowned groggily as the drugs hit their bloodstream. 

They will wake in a few hours with nothing more than headaches, empty cups, and the shamefaced agreement that perhaps they _not mention this to anyone_. 

One of his greatest subjects is history. The history of this land intrigues him; the families and the intrigue, the war and bloodshed and marriages and politics. The magic. The legends. He knows, for instance, that this cave was once a single entity, home to the Dark One after he’d been caught by Cinderella. 

A wry twist to his lips as his brain thinks _Ashely Boyd_ and then dismisses it. He’d believed in fairy tales, but hadn’t given much thought to the reality of Cinderella visiting with her three year old daughter and using him as a convenient baby sitter. 

But the cell has been divided, extended, and this cave houses more than just the Dark One now. He should be scared. He should not even be down here in the first place. 

That hasn’t stopped him before and it’s not going to stop him now. 

“Well, well, well.” Comes the serpentine voice, gravelly and sweet. “Look who it is, little Henry Mills.”

The closest he has come to seeing Rumplestiltskin in his magical form had been the book and Henry recoils from the figure that presses itself up to the cage bars of the first cell. 

“Tsk, tsk.” The figure hisses. “I’m sure your mothers would be most upset to see you down here.”

Henry clenches his jaw, refusing to give in, Rumple grins in response. 

“That is, if you still had two of them.”

So he knows. That’s one tick off his list of questions. 

“How do we get back to Storybrooke?”

In front of him, Rumplestiltskin blinks back in surprise. He’s not sure what surprised him; the question or the deep voice that asked it. He might not have seen the man since they’ve been in this land, but Rumplestiltskin hasn’t seen him either. 

And Henry is no longer the skinny little boy that believed with all his heart. 

He has grown taller and filled out and has muscles from riding horses and sword fighting and archery and hunting. His voice is deeper and eyes harder, he holds himself with all the stature of the royalty he was both born and adopted into. He has grown in a way he doesn’t believe he would have back in that other land, coddled with technology and ease and everything at his fingertips. 

“You don’t.” Rumplestiltskin smiles at him smugly. “It took me many centuries and a few ruined lives to get there myself.”

 

If the man is expecting him to back down or give up, he’s sorely mistaken. Henry doesn’t blink. 

“There’s a way. Emma got there.”

Scaled fingers wrap around the bars and yellowed teeth bare themselves. 

“Then I suggest you ask her.”

Entering into a staring contest with the Dark One is perhaps not his greatest idea ever, but he doesn’t have that many appealing options right now. 

“Boy.” Another voice comes trilling from around the corner, sickly sweet and honeyed and dangerous. “Oh boy, I have some of your answers, if you want them badly enough.”

His fingers curl into fists and he debates the merits of questioning the woman that put them all into this predicament in the first place. Maleficent is not to be trusted. But then again, neither is Rumplestiltskin. 

Henry leaves delighted laughter behind him as he walks towards the newest voice. 

She’s both intimidating and disappointing when he finally lays eyes on her. He wasn’t allowed to go with the group when they went to rescue Emma, so he was not there when they apprehended her. The cell that binds her magic was constructed as soon as possible and they spirited the woman down here faster than he could blink. 

She’s thin and tired looking, but her hair is wild and her eyes are full of dangerous promises he is scared to hear. 

“Emma took herself to that land.” Maleficent offers the information like a present to gain his trust; a useless gesture as it’s not something they don’t already know. “I supressed her magic, so when it all came rushing back I guess you could say she overloaded.”

“Great.” He shrugs, as casual as he can muster. “How do you propose we do the same?”

“She’s powerful, that one.” The woman knows how to play things casual herself, inspecting the sharp looking nails of her right hand. “So full of desperate, desperate goodness.”

He sighs. 

“Well, thanks. If that’s all you’ve got…” 

He spins on his heel and begins to walk away, but doesn’t make it more than two steps. 

“You’ll have to make sure she’s really there.” The words come out flat and even, as if they hold no import at all, a casual conversation about the weather. “Before you launch magics beyond your understanding. You want to make certain she actually went back to that land.”

“How?” It comes out without his permission, too eager to be disguised. “How do we find that out?”

She looks at him down the bridge of her nose as if addressing a dim witted child. 

“Your mother knows. Your mother always knows how to contact her pets.”

There is something salacious and evil about the way she says it that makes him want to take his sword and split her head from her body. The fingers of his hand actually extend and flex as if gripping a hilt. 

No. He is one of the good guys and the good guys don’t have thoughts like that, no matter what they’re goaded with. 

“Henry.” The voice that calls him now is softer and gentler and he has his entire life of trusting it to combat, because she is down here as well and while he may not know all the details of that situation, nobody makes it down here for nothing. “Henry, you shouldn’t be here. You know you shouldn’t.”

It’s not even a cell. 

It’s barely a window box; a one foot square hole in the wall covered by mesh. 

A fluttering hint of blue wings is the only thing he can make out past the heavy chain mail of the covering. 

“You can’t trust them.”

He steps closer and tries not to sneer. 

“And apparently I can’t trust you, either.”

There’s a hum of disproval and he knows that it must sting to be lumped into the same category as both Rumplestiltskin and Maleficent. But everyone is angry at the Blue Fairy and they blame her for this situation. 

“There’s a way.” She wheedles, voice thin and high and pleading. “Tell your grandparents, tell them that the portal might still be open between the wardrobe they sent Emma through as a child. Tell them…”

Her voice drops down and he has to strain to hear it, whisper thin and sad and lonely. 

“… tell them I helped you.”

***

“Sidney!” 

Her voice is shrill and harsh and eager and Regina doesn’t even care. 

The mirror blurs and eddies and then his face swarms into view. He looks tired and faintly annoyed, which is probably par for the course, but honestly she could roast him alive at this point she has had so little sleep that a little courtesy might not go astray. 

“Your majesty.” It comes out like a drawl and she understands he’s not too impressed with life as a mirror cursed genie, but that’s his lot and he bought himself to that end so she has very little sympathy for him. “What can I possibly do for you this evening?”

Perhaps a good roasting isn’t entirely out of bounds. 

“Show me Emma.”

He rolls his eyes. 

This is not a new request. It was the first thing she’d done upon returning from Maleficent’s castle. Demanded he use his only skill and locate her pet. It hadn’t worked of course, his magic does not traverse realms and no matter how much she had kept demanding, he had done nothing but disappoint. 

It’s frustrating for all involved. 

Regardless, the image in the mirror swirls again, grey clouds swarming and coalescing in coils again and again and Regina is reminded of nothing less than waiting for a web page to load in the old world. 

“Is something supposed to happen?” 

The whisper behind her makes Regina bristle. 

Of course she has an audience for this. The Charmings and their crew have been nothing but constant observers to her repeated failures in trying to locate and reach Emma. She had promised Emma before this eventful trip that she would do nothing to antagonise or harm anyone, no matter what they said or did. 

That was, however, well before Maleficent’s interference and the subsequent portal jumping. Surely Emma couldn’t hold her to that promise now. 

“Yes.” She hisses instead, injecting as much venom into the word as she is unable to inject into a fireball. “But it’s not.”

Sidney returns to view with a half apologetic shrug. 

“Why?” James at least makes an effort to sound impartial and not totally against her and everything she stands for. “What’s wrong?”

Regina’s jaw is aching from the amount of pressure she is grinding her teeth with. 

“The magic of the mirror is joined with other mirrors and reflective surfaces that have seen my reflection. At least within this realm, it seems Storybrooke is harder to reach with no magic and an entirely different land away.”

But when has she, Regina Mills, Evil Queen and nightmare of thousands, ever let a little thing like logic and laws of nature stand in her way?

Reaching out, Regina curls her fingers around the ornate silver frame and closes her eyes. She reaches all the way down inside of herself and draws up every ounce of energy she can find. It surges through her blood and along her nerves and she forces herself to think of Emma, beautiful Emma, curled up at the foot of her bed naked, face smoothed out in sleep. Trusting and loyal and lovely and loved, skin reddened by the fire, blonde hair in riotous curls over a shapely shoulder. 

She thinks of those lips against her skin and the curve of Emma’s neck as she bows her head, of green eyes rising to meet hers with nothing but acceptance and need and adoration. 

Power sings like heated lava, burning at it surges down her arms and through her fingers into the metal and glass in front of her. 

Sidney gasps, a shocked and feral sound, and when she opens her eyes she sees that his have turned purple. 

“Try again.”

It’s panted and rasped out through clenched teeth, dry and sandpapery on her tongue. She falls back, tottery on her feet, dizzy and unsteady, but it’s an order, non-negotiable and final. 

The mirror swirls again and everybody in the room holds their breath. 

Nothing. 

“What?” Snow’s voice is stretched thin. “Why isn’t it working?”

“It’s not there.” Regina whispers, her throat closing. “Storybrooke isn’t there.”

“It’s there.” Sidney appears a second later. “But…”

And Regina quirks her head. 

“There are no mirrors. At least, none that have seen my reflection.”

“How is that possible?” The wolf is behind her. “Your interior design was nothing but mirrors.”

There were mirrors in her house, in her office, the small mirrors of her Benz, and that is not even counting the incidental mirrors she may have passed in her day to day life, those of the diner, the hospital, the doctors’ office. 

The very idea that none of them are there is ludicrous. 

Unless… 

“They’ve been broken.” She’s confused, thinking aloud, trying to piece together what has happened. “Once a mirror is broken, magic wise, the pieces are considered mirrors created in their own right. And they would not have seen my reflection.”

There is no logical reason she can even imagine as to why Emma would have broken every mirror she could find in an abandoned town. Certainly not if she wanted to be found. 

And that is not even taking into account reflective surfaces which should be everywhere in the town; windows and glass and metal. Shop fronts and benches and car wheels. The possibilities should be endless. Locating Emma, locating _any_ aspect of the town should be easy if it still exists. 

Regina breathes in, she closes her eyes again and silently begs Emma to forgive her. When she lifts her lids, her eyes are steely and her mouth is set in a determined line. 

“Do it.” She orders, lifting her right palm and laying it on the surface of the mirror in front of her. “Show me Emma’s ouroboros.”

“Your majesty.” Sidney gasps his shock. “You swore a blood oath!”

“I know.” Her head bows and she doesn’t have to look to feel the very substance leaking from the palm laid flat on the glass, the pain etches into her very bones. “But this surpasses…”

It does. This is life and death and Emma, more important than anything and surely Emma will understand. But Emma’s trust… 

“Do it.”

And Sidney’s face blurs again, swirling into the cloudy smoke that clears and wavers and turns into a picture. 

Everybody in the room murmurs, sounds of relief and confusion, as Regina imagines that they’re all trying to place the scene that has presented itself.

“Is she in the forest?” Granny mutters somewhere to Regina’s right. 

“Why would she go to the forest?” Snow echoes. 

This is the very question in Regina’s brain as the picture shows nothing but overgrown trees and plants and very little else passing by. It seems as if Emma is walking in a steady pace. Relief swarms Regina’s body. 

At the very least, Emma is alive. 

The movement stops as Emma must do and then focuses on the ground, an arm enters the picture, pale and thin and Emma’s. It reaches forward and Regina bites her tongue. She squints at the jagged white triangular tile that the hand picks up. It has a number two on it. 

Henry is the first to piece it together, Regina can tell by the intake of his breath.

“That’s Storybrooke.” His voice is both awed and scared. “That’s… that’s the town clock.”

Everyone leans a little closer, holding their breath. 

Regina’s fingers twitch and she presses her palm against the glass, slick with her blood now, her knuckles blanching white with the pressure. That place is desolate, overgrown, it cannot be her town. It cannot be the place that was a well-tended, pristine municipality only three years ago. Well maintained roads, freshly painted buildings, populated and thriving and healthy. 

“Emma.” It comes out like a whisper and then the need overcomes her, makes her louder. “Emma!”

But there is no reaction. 

“Sidney!” Another hiss. “Why can’t she hear me?”

“I can’t…” His voice floats through the picture of Emma dropping the clock piece and looking around in a wide circle. There is nothing to be seen except trees and plants and green, green everywhere. “… even with your magic push, your majesty, I cannot broach the realms completely.”

They are forced to watch as the image changes. 

It is not slow and steady anymore. It is fast and rushed and Regina frowns at the plants rushing past. 

“She’s running.” Red’s voice drifts up at the end, almost a question, but not. She’s trying to puzzle something out, the long lost thread of something familiar. “She’s… she’s…”

Everyone is looking forward, Regina is the only one to look back, to see Red’s face when the woman bites her tongue and doesn’t meet her eyes. She doesn’t need to finish the sentence, however, because Granny beats her to it, speaking without thought or subtlety. 

“She’s being hunted.”

Her head snaps back so fast she’s sure she’s going to feel it in a few hours, but she has to watch as the mirror finally reaches a larger tree, the trunk wide, with low hanging branches. Regina watches with her breath hot in her lungs as Emma’s hands come out and grab the nearest limb, trying to haul herself up. 

The hands go blurry for a second and Regina emits a loud sound of dismay she doesn’t even think to bite back as Emma’s hands slip altogether and the picture swivels rapidly, jerking upwards to see the sky. It means… 

It means Emma has fallen on her back and Regina cannot take her eyes off the large patch of blue, the white clouds, and the tops of the trees that look ominously like they’re closing in, trapping Emma in some dome of threat. 

“Sidney!” Her voice is low and threatening and desperate. “You contact her now, you get me there! I will trap you in there forever, I will…”

But the words are no good. 

Nothing is any good. 

Regina’s throat goes dry to the sound of Snow’s low moan, Red and Granny both sucking in lungfuls of distressed air. Vaguely, somewhere in the distance, she can hear James punch the wall. 

And in front of her, the mirror vision of the sky begins to fill with two, three, four… a dozen pointed, furry wolf faces, teeth bared and snarling. 

Then the mirror goes black and begins swirling with grey mist. Sidney doesn’t appear, whether frightened or respectful, and instead the picture returns to their own glossy reflection. A normal mirror again. 

“Get her back!” She hisses. “Show me Emma!”

But there is nothing. 

The ouroboros is unresponsive. There is no more Emma to reach. 

***

To Be Continued...

**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N** I know. I know. While this fic remains predominantly a Swan Queen fic, Emma and Regina may not actually interact (as a couple or at all) in the following chapters.  Please trust me on this. There is a plan and I will stick to it. While PIB ended as a complete fic, there were many aspects within that were left unfinished.


End file.
